


Honor Among Thieves

by runobody2



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-11 09:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5621533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runobody2/pseuds/runobody2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suddenly, you hear something that definitely sounds like an explosion.  A moment later, there’s a quiet fizzing near your ear, likely a signal jammer.  You sigh.  Well, the mission had been going suspiciously smoothly.</p><p>Time for Plan B.  You employ this one a little more than you’d like.  It’s called Making Up Bullshit.</p><p>(Vriska and Rose try to rob Scratch's mansion on the same night.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honor Among Thieves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smolonde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolonde/gifts).



> @ transstrilondes thanks for the prompt! I had fun writing it and I hope you enjoy reading :).

“Rose, I’m in,” Terezi chirrups gleefully from the bug in your right earring (it’s shaped like a horrorterror; no point in vigilantism unless you follow the newest fashions in espionage technology) as you scale the perimeter wall of Scratch’s mansion.  You snort a little.

“I think that your memeing is unwarranted and most of the credit for that should go to Sollux.”

“Overruled!  He gave me the codes for my wiggling day, and moreover memeing is always warran- oh, there’s a guard coming.  Duck into the stairwell ten feet forward and to your left.”

You do.  “Thanks,” you whisper, as you hear boots clomp past your hiding place.

“You’re welcome- although, you sure have fallen low, taking directions from a blind girl.  Okay, stay in there for thirty more seconds, then continue along the original route.”

You creep along the outside wall and find your way to the window you’d scoped out a week earlier.  Terezi mutters occasional direction to you as you creep along the green-papered hallways.  You close in on your target room in almost record time.

What you’re after is a shipment of a new experimental drug that just arrived in Derse yesterday.  It hasn’t hit the market yet, and you’re here to do some recon and steal a sample to run tests on.  When you’re two corridors from the room that the drugs should be stored, you think you hear a distinct thudding noise, and maybe some muffled cursing.  “Terezi,” you ask, “is there anything going on over to my right?”

She clucks a little.  “There isn’t anyone unusual on screen, but I think the cameras on the nearest foyer have been looped.  Possibly in some other places too.  I’ll check- be careful.”  There’s a minute pause before she says her next words, not quite short or long enough to be entirely deliberate, although when she speaks her voice is measured.  “Rose- I heard that Vriska Serket got back in town this week.  This seems a little subtle for her, but she’s always liked her surprises.”  You still, with your back against the wall and listen to the tapping from Terezi’s end of the line.

You don’t know Vriska, but you know _of_ her.  She used to operate in Derse several years back, and was fairly influential; she left suddenly, with some violence- something to do with the Felt; she knew Terezi at some point, or Terezi knew her.

Suddenly, you hear something that definitely sounds like an explosion.  A moment later, there’s a quiet fizzing near your ear, likely a signal jammer.  You sigh.  Well, the mission _had_ been going suspiciously smoothly.  Whoever’s here, Vriska or not, they’ll probably be after the drugs as well.  If you recall correctly- and you always recall correctly- there’s a storage space near the place where the drugs are being kept where you can hide and watch.

You slip into the room and close the door not a moment too soon.  As you watch, a troll that matches the profile for Vriska - forked horns, cerulean blood - rounds the corner and enters the holding area.  From what you can tell, the drugs are stored in silver rectangular cases, each about a foot high by a foot and a half long and four inches deep.  They’re arranged in a set of stacks; you would estimate that there are about seventy cases total.

Vriska has a hover-carrier, Dersian technology in the form of a floating platform that holds cargo.  As you watch she loads as many of the cases as she can onto it- nine or ten.  Just as she exits, the signal jammer seems to lose potency.  The static from your ear clears away, but you don’t regain connection.  Still, some kind of automatic lockdown kicks in over the holding room.

You quickly catalogue your situation; you’re still in Scratch’s mansion with communications down, and whatever distraction Vriska set it’s sure to wear out soon.  With the lock over the holding room, the only remaining samples of the drug are in Vriska’s hands.  It’s now or never.  You could try to get the jump on her, slam open the door and leap.  You have a knife with you, but no heavy artillery.  This had been supposed to be a stealthy sort of mission.  You might be able to fight Vriska, but certainly not quickly enough to overpower her before Scratch’s guards come running.

Time for Plan B.  You employ this one a little more than you’d like.  It’s called Making Up Bullshit.

You step out the door of your hiding place.  “Here’s what’s _I’d_ like to happen,” you say, keeping your tone as smooth and cool and sweet as churning milk, soon-to-be-ice-cream.  “You give me your hover-carrier, with the drugs on them, and we both leave this place, me with the drugs and you without them, and then we never speak of this again.”

She smiles at you, bright and nasty.  “I appreciate a girl who tells me her intentions- really, I do- but there’s just this little problem!  Which is that that’s not what _I_ want, like at all.”  She taps her foot lazily a little for good measure.

“Well- here’s what I _don’t_ want to happen- and what I doubt you want either.  We fight here, and Scratch catches us, and I don’t think I need to fill in the rest, do I?”  You step forward as you speak, edging closer to Vriska and the drugs by her.

She tilts her head, and then something in her posture morphs.  In a moment, she's cocked her hip and is gesturing loosely with both hands, knife still glinting in the right, somewhere in the realm of congeniality.  “You know, you seem smart enough, and you’ve made it this far into Scratch Mansion, which probably says something.  Anyways, not to brag, you’ve probably heard of me before- I’m Vriska Serket.  I’m going to take these drugs, and then I’ll sell them before Scratch can, and if you want you can join me.  Normally I wouldn’t  just hire people off the street like this- but I just got in town so I’m a little shortstaffed!  What do you say?”  By this time, you’re standing right across from her, so close that you could count her eyelashes.

There’s something to be said for the classics, you think as you lean in, watching her carefully.  As soon as your lips meet hers she bites, messy and eager, and snakes her hand around to grab at your hair.  You stay there a moment.  Her mouth is cooler than a human’s, and you trace your tongue around the rough ridge on her lips where they’re chapped.

Then you knee her in the groin and snatch two cases of drugs off the hover-carrier.

“It seems,” you say as she splutters, “time to make a swift exit.”  Slamming the nearest window with the briefcase, you climb out, and run as quickly as you can for the woods where Dave should be waiting.

You have a feeling it’s going to be a long couple of weeks.  There’s a cut just above your upper lip from the glass of the window, and when you reach up to touch it your index finger comes away stained a dark blue from Vriska’s lipstick.  She must apply it eight coats too strong.  You find that you don’t mind.


End file.
